Blue Monday and Oros PART 3 .... Conclusion

On Tuesday it would seem that my blue Monday is over. We are all cheerfully awaiting Bafana's match against France, hoping against hope and reason that they can pull off a 3-0 victory that would see them through to the next round.

I'm scheduled to go and watch at Jan's place if work allows. Since we have the imperative of the match driving us, work allows and at 3:30 I call a taxi from Paddy's Sportsbar where the good citizens of Randburg are already out in their numbers. For a moment I regret that I'm going tto watch at a private house and miss out on the 'gees'.

But only until a drunk guy called Mike insists on blowing his vuvuzela loudly in my ear ... at regular intervals. I move to another table an watch the spectacle. Randburg dressed up in the yellow Bafana kit for the occassion and is in high spirits and ordering more of the same continuously....

At kick-off time I'm still waiting for my taxi but I consider to be a good thing. This way I can catch a bit of the 'gees' which is now very spirited indeed. I am also interested to see what Randburg will do during the singing of the national anthem. Although all the colours of the rainbow nation are represented, it is by far a 'white' congregation present in Paddy's.

Will they stand for the anthem?

Yes they will. They rise like one and what surprises me even more is that many of them even seem to know the seSotho part of our tri-lingual anthem and do not fake singing it like many whiteys, including myself, do. Nevertheless, looking around I can see that most of us are faking singing the seSotho part and when the Afrikaans part comes along I see many darkies faking that ... before we all find our common voice in the English conclusion.

All united and proudly South African thanks to the World Cup and I'm happy to be there and part of it.

Then my taxi arrives and I'm off to Jan's place listening to the game on the radio in some darkie language while the driver Johannes keeps me abreast of developments. When we score our first goal he nearly overturns the car, but when he regains control it is high-fives and elaborate handshakes in celebration.

After the game we are all in high spirits at Jan's, congratulating ourselves on Bafana's victory and agreeing that all turned out well with all things considered. We spend a pleasant evening with wine and a splendid spaghetti bolognaise that Jan made ... well done Jan ... before we all decamp at about 10pm, citing the fact that the work not done by leaving early on Tuesday, must be crammed into Wednesday.

On departure I steal a bottle of wine from Jan, but have the good manners to alert him to this fact and after he inspected the bottle to ascertain that it was not one of his 'special' ones he bids me good drinking and goodbye.

At home I open the bottle, pour myself a glass and sits down to write you a witty blog about the day ... when my niece's cat Schmiegel jumps through the window and knocks over the bottle. It shatters on my already dirty white tile floor. The floor is dirty because Zita has disappeared. I clean up and go to bed thinking that my blue Monday may in fact not be over.

Predictably Wednesday and Thursday go by in a blur of work but we finish the programme in good time on Thursday afternoon and I even get a bit of praise and is certain that my blue Monday is finally over and at last I have time to write.

All of this, but especially the broken bottle of wine, lead me to the reflect once again that shit happens by itself and that you have to work real hard for the good things in life. Also that if you don't deal with the shit in your life, it multiplies and in the same way, if you don't deal with the good stuff in your life it diminishes.

This is a common mistake that a lot of people make. They become so busy dealing with shit that they forget to deal with the good stuff in their lives, which means the good stuff diminishes and since nature does not tolerate a vacuum, the space created by the departing good stuff ... fills up with shit.

It is always good to remind oneself of this: Life is never how it should be or ought to be. You can count on that. But you can also count on the fact that life is always exactly how it is at any given point and if you just deal with how it is ... you'll be okay. Not as okay as you may feel that you deserve, but exactly as okay as you would be.

So remember to fight the shit and fight for the good stuff because they are on the same continuum.

My next blog will be about the damn cat Schmiegel ...

Blue Monday and Oros PART 2

I arrive at work with the welcoming sight of closed doors with signs that read: "ENERGY SAVING TIP: IF THE HEATER IS ON CLOSE YOUR OFFICE DOOR" And in smaller print: "Thanks for caring for the environment".

We are working for a environmental programme after all and being by now a kind of heat-seeking missile after a hell-ride in a real skoroskoro, complete with holes in the floor through which you could see the cold tar passing and what is worse the cold air coming in at high speed, I'm all for preserving heat in whatever form.

I politely knock on one door and find nobody home. But it is warm so I stand there for a while, while cunningly thinking about my next move ... which is to go and politely knock on the second door ... same story.

At Charles Moore's office I found them all huddled around what they called a 'production meeting' and I join in with the repeated assurance of how happy I am to be there. They are really huddled in a production meeting not just around the heater and have scant regard for my travails.

So having attended the production meeting I am eagerly at work in my office where the erudite Mister Zee has turned the aircon up to the maximum ... to my great delight.

In the meeting it was made clear to me that I should prioritise an interview that needed transcription ... so I open my inbox and see 'interview', open it and start beavering away ... for about three hours ... before I gently inquire about the spelling of a name mentioned in the interview ... I am told that I was not supposed to work on THAT interview because it has to be shot again.

I work on something else and catch a lift home with Charles who complains bitterly that the public broadcaster which is commissioning the show, the SABC, is still cash-strapped but they did find it in their budget to buy R3 million to spend on tickets for the World Cup.

Corruption is rife in that organisation and every new broom they bring in seems more keen than the previous to sweep ever larger amounts of taxpayer's money into their own pockets. The carpets are already too worn to sweep anything under.

I tell Charles to stop depressing me further and we part ways in silence as I get off at Nuno's and he heads home ... equally depressed.

There I meet Jan who is in possession of my spare credit card which I badly need since I lost my main card in the Lollipop Lounge last Thursday after a night of ... well let's put it politely ... excess.

(The Calvinistic part of me, that can suddenly make a forceful comeback after such an event, would have me believe all my other troubles stemmed from that night... I decline the invitation of believe.)

So happily re-united with some form of cashflow I drink a dram or two with Jan and friends only to walk home into further darkness in my area. I turn on my heel and head for Charles's house to watch our Monday night edition of the show ... only to see if some glaring error did not slip through.

I've been working on the show now for three months and have not seen much of it. I only watch the sub-titles.

Anyway Charles invites me to sleep there due to the energy crisis at my humble abode and I gladly accept. Another cold night and fighting with polar bears would have been too much for my frail frame of mind.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Winter solstice, blue Monday, Oros and beyond... PART 1

So it is winter solstice.

It is also Monday in Johannesburg so it is going to be blue ... the sky I mean and my lips and my fingers due to the unfortunate heating arrangements in my humble abode. So far so bad ... then it gets ... well worse ...

I stumble out of bed and rush to my R149 heater. The one that have reversed climate change when it was called upon to do so, but having done so, found that it was no match for the real deal: An old-school Joburg winter.

You must remember that my humble abode is at the bottom of some kind of valley and the well-known (at least to me) inversion effect is in full force here. The cold settles at the bottom of the valley and that point seems to be right below and around my bed with the lesser effects felt in the rest of said abode.

That is why I bravely rush to my heater in the morning, often having to fight off an amorous polar bear or two in the process. They always tell me the poles have heated up too much for their liking and find my said abode more suited to their suits.

But that is besides the point. When I get to my heater it refuses to give heat. This one may expect from a reluctant woman but not from a R149 heater. I am upset especially since it so admirably did my bidding when climate change needed to be reversed.

I curse it and the R149 I spent on it and turn to make myself a cup of tea but my much more effective and expensive kettle would not budge either. I am beginning to see the dawning of a bad blue day ... and once again I'm not mistaken.

There is indeed no electricity.

Now, I may or may not, have mentioned in my previous dispatches that I cannot really be considered fully operational before I had my first cup of tea. This is the proof.

I am freezing my arse off while morosely sipping on a glass of Oros ... a sort of synthetic drink that poor people use to keep kids happy at under-8 parties ... but it is not working for me. It only serves to remind me that my situation is poor.

No electricity means no escape from the Alcatraz in which we live ...I can't get out of my electric-gated yard.

It is only on my second glass of Oros that my brain, out of desperation no doubt, sends me an urgent message which I decode as follows: "Your damn sister has a gas stove!"

For me it is the work of a moment to realise: "TEA!"

Now things are coming together ... it would seem.

Armed with a cup of warm tea, I immediately search out a sunny spot from where I can eye the forbidding fort gate while smoking a cigarette and think. Yes the sun is shining outside.

Then I realise that this being South Africa where 'load-shedding', the euphemism for
'black-outs' (I suppose the latter could have a racist connotation) are not uncommon, it would be stupid to have an electric gate that you can't open manually.

Working from that premise I further surmise that if the manual option at my humble rented abode is padlocked there must probably be some battery-assisted emergency escape. And so there is.

Soon I'm walking gaily in the sunshine to catch a taxi.

On nearing the spot where I always catch them I am briefly heartened by the number of them passing and when one stops within hailing distance I forego it as a skoroskoro. A little mistake...

Although it is already 11am every single taxi that comes by after that is packed. So I stand at the roadside forlornly pointing my finger in the direction of Randburg ... for 20 minutes ... before I get a real skoroskoro ... what else I think and I take it.

TO BE CONTINUED...

It's too damn cold to blog...

Joburg can get very cold. This week saw temperatures plummet to -10 degrees celsius. If I was a romantic I would have linked that to Bafana's shattering defeat by Uruguay which briefly silenced the vuvuzelas.

Just for the record, the shocking decision by the referee to send off our goalkeeper only served to unite the nation .... everyone was in full, if somewhat morose, agreement that it was ... well ... a shocking decision.

But it is really to cold to blog so I'm heading back to my bed with the forlorn hope that it will warm up a bit later and the even more forlorn hope that Bafana will beat France 3-0 which they apparently have to do to stay in the competition.

It's the World Cup and I am getting adventurous....

Yes, the World Cup spirit has taken a firm hold on me and when Mark Morrison suggests that we go and have lunch in Newtown near the fan park I do not hesitate ... I'm in... but disappointment awaits...

Mark wants to take photographs for the Newtown project and I just want to soak in the 'gees' in a different area from Melville. But we are clearly too early. There's no game on ... no fans to photograph and no gees. So we sit down for lunch at a deserted Nikki's Oasis. I have a splendid burger and a beer.

We have a very able and friendly waitress whose name eludes me now, but I'm surprised that she does not know the darkie word for the Black Label beer brand namely 'zamalek'. Apparently this means 'something that does not give you a babelas' but I beg to differ.

I scold the waitress gently about her youthful ignorance and we stop about five passing darkies to do a survey in order for me to convince her of the veracity of my information and I am not disappointed ... they all agree that a Black Label is indeed a zamalek.

Mark is there on business and proves this by sending numerous SMSes while I enjoy Joburg's fantastic winter sunshine. But I do get bored and take a stroll through where people are setting up their fleamarket stalls where I buy myself ... a VUVUZELA in the colours of the South African flag of course ... but just think of it ... I buy myself a DAMN VUVUZELA. Good grief! What is happening to my mind ... I'm thinking.

So having done the deed I now have to blow on the damn thing. Not as easy as you may think ... I blow and I blow with getting a squeak out of the thing. I then take to just staring forlornly at it, wondering why I just spent R70 on something so utterly useless ... Mark mocks my inability ... and I am about to admit defeat when I notice the damn has got a small hole in it!

I go and exchange it and after a couple more tries I realise that one just has to relax the stomach muscles and VOILA! You too can produce the sound of a frustrated elephant bull with a priapism and an infection in his trunk.

I blew it so well that two different darkie photographers wanted to take photos of me and I let them. Then I got Mark to take a photo of us and then they wanted a photo of themselves with me on their own cameras and race relations in South Africa once again flourished. The revamped area around the world famous Market Theatre is really wort a visit.

Have the bacon end egg burger at Nikki's I can really recommend it at just R30. There is also Museum Africa to be investigated ... by you.

So that was my adventurous foray into Newtown and I regretted having to leave just as the first people began arriving. I had my French class to attend to. Okay it was not much of an adventure but I did leave Melville again for some other destination than Randburg and Jan's house in Parkwood.

Engaging with foreigners .... and I could once again not do a spellcheck

Having become used to the facility of engaging with strangers in Melville, I thought engaging with foreigners would be an easy task ... I should have known better.

They are as a rule mistrustful as to my intentions and it would seem that my natural sartorial elegance and suave manner make no difference.

They are in the 'most dangerous city in the world' and they ain't gonna trust nobody.

But I try. Here are the results:

First up the Americans.

I find one Justin sitting at 'my' table in 'my' restaurant (Nuno's) and I buy him a beer when I learn that he is a humanitarian worker in Afghanistan. Justin is sort of uninteresting as just a undercover CIA agent could hope to be. He is vaguely unspecific in all his responses to my questions.

Next up the Dutch.

Now this is quite problematic with the first bunch because my sister Emily's daschund bites their little girl when she wants to play with it. My engagement stops with profuse apologies.

Next Mexico.

The Mexicans are keen to engage but we have communictaion (sic) problems. One of them, Oswaldo speaks a good English and he wants to sell me a good tequila.

I have heard from a variety of reliable sources that the tequila on sale in SA is the worst kind imaginable ... and for the record I can state that if you really want to try the Level 6 on the Baboon Scale babelas ... mix the tequila on sale in SA with any other drink. You would hardly be able to breathe.

So tomorrow at 11:30am I'm going to have a tequila tasting with Oswaldo.

More Americans....

Two very pretty American women (not girls) in the company of two attractive Mexican guys. They are clearly couples but as soon as I use the word 'darkie' one of the American chicks gets miffed and they up and leave without understanding. They even leave behind several half-drunk glasses of South African red. Talk about wasteful consumption....!!

The Dutch again....

My next bunch of Dutch are more satisfactory.

They are filled with happiness. They are dressed in orange and are here to ENJOY. So I get the darkies to team up and sing ... I joined in but clearly I faked it ... Shosholoza.

Incidently I am still convinced it should be our national anthem... But I do not actually know what it means .... So I venture out to consult the nearest darkie ... but where I am most darkies are foreigners ... go figure. They are from Zimbabwe, Zambia or other countries that begin with a Z. Like Congo ... except it doesn't anymore.

So I have to hunt further down the street. I find Gunman ... he is called gunman because he actually packs a gun ... I've seen it. But he is also a Sotho and he tells me shosholoza means: "Move on/Keep on moving."

This I remember as correct from my seSotho endeavours at school. In case you do not know, the prefix indicates the language and as in: the Zulus speak isiZulu, the Xhosas isiXhosa and the Basothos seSotho.

I think I mentioned down the line that this is quite a complicated country. So let's move along SHOSHOLOZA.

So the Dutch speak Dutch to me and I speak Afrikaans to them and since the willingness to undestand each other is there. We love the understandability of each other. Great fun.

Then the Danish..

A group of nine flew in for one game. They got a special deal on the plane tickets, but despite frequent requests from my side they refused to engage... so fuck them ... I really cannot stand people who travel 10 000 miles to stick their heads up their own arses!

Then there is James. He is an American. But he lives here. He is also a darkie. He restores my faith in humankind. James is actually half Native American (Cherokee) and half Haitian.

He came here for the first time in 1999 and after 4 days in Joburg bought himself a house. It says it all.

And then I meet some Chinese from Ghana... I should have known. They wore Ghana T-shirts made in China. This is a sign that I should stop the damn blog for tonight.

Okay I promised the Danes a raw deal .... they support Germany's 4-0 massacre of Australia too loudly for my liking.

Mzanzi comes to the party ... and what a party it was ... IS.

I had my doubts about our ability to successfully organise an event of this magnitude but I need not have worried ... everything went more than well. It was cheerful and not even a shambles ... you had to be dead not to feel the 'gees'.

It was at the last minute, but Mzansi (South Africa's darkie nickname) came to the party with all the vigour of a diverse people who suddenly realises that they are capable of greatness and unity of spirit.

This morning I even left my laptop in the care of three strange young darkie guys while I went walkabout to think what I was going to write about.

While walking I suddenly realise that it is typical of us South Africans. We are always oscillating between hope and despair.

This thought brings me back to Amanda's beautiful painting called "Slave to Hope".

It is a very '70s painting in style and was done in that style deliberately. Amanda is a decor fundi and she went through a '70s phase' some eight years ago. So the painting is round ... about a metre in diameter and it hangs in the middle of my room.

On the 'hope' side she depicts herself sitting cross-legged on the edge of a magic carpet.

She's wearing a '70s reddish/pinkish flowery dress and is high up in the sky and blowing bubbles into the clouds.

It is really beautiful and I hang the painting so that I see that side the most. That means it is hanging facing me where I sit and use my laptop ... if I have a signal at home which is not often.
Otherwise I just sit and stare into space and at Amanda's painting.

Facing my bed is the 'despair' side ... so I wake up to that. Here Amanda plays Ophelia ... she is drowning in a inky blue sea and almost slipping out of the painting.

Above her ominous jellyfish float ... ominously.

Some mornings when I rush out of bed to get to the alarm clock I bump into it and it swivels on its mounting. When I finally get up after hitting the snooze button three times ... I always set my alarm for half-an-hour before I really have to get up because I find those 10-minute snoozes almost more rewarding than the night's rest. Your dreams become clear and memorable and it is ... lovely.

Okay ... so when I finally get up, I bump into it and when I sit down to have my obligatory cup of tea. It is a general rule that you should not try to speak or engage with me in any way before I had my first cup of tea in the morning.

Let's try again... When I am finally sitting down with my tea and cigarette ... I look to Amanda's painting for inspiration for the day and all I see is the thin metal frame.

Stasis between hope and despair ... a thin line ... one all too familiar to the citizens of Mzansi and I am always happy to realise that it's mine too.

But now I'm off to engage with the World Cup tourists ... I am very disappointed that there are so few female World Cup tourists. I am oscillating between hope and despair concerning my investment in Viagra that I made recently ... will the blue pills reach their sell-by date before I can try them out? I am a slave to hope...

Okay I lied... I'm off to watch SA play France ... in RUGBY!

When I get home I see the painting is actually called 'Slave of Hope' .... I wonder if my mis-representation of the title did not spring from a Freudian slap ... ok slip...

LANGUAGE IS INDEED SOMETHING THAT SWIMS IN YOUR HEAD.